Sigiriya rock in the background
We took a hike in Sri Lanka to this ancient city. We were hiking up Sigiriya rock and we saw a couple of chmemelons. The male chmemelon is bigger and greener. We walked up a spiral staircase the lead up to a cave with a bunch of frescoes. A fresco is an ancient painting.
Before you walk up the staircase there is a wall called mirror walk. The reason they call it mirror wall is because the people who lived there a long time ago polished it with beeswax and it is still here today because a rock is protecting it from the weather. As I was catching my breathe, I looked up and saw two giant paws and in the middle of them there was a stair case. A long time ago there was a giant lions head between the paws and you would walk right into the lions mouth. This is why they called it Lion Rock.
Our guide holding the photo showing what Lion rock used to look like. Now only the paws are there.
I kept having to move my eyes upward until I got to the top because it was so tall but then it dawned on my that I had to hike up this stair case! When we got to the top I stood around in awe. Then I finally slapped myself out of this zone and realized we were taking a family picture. We took one nice picture and one jumping picture.
When we were on our way down the rock we stopped at a place where we could hold snakes. There was one big crate and two small baskets. He opened one of the small baskets and out popped a cobra! He opened the other small basket and another cobra popped out! But when he opened the big crate I jumped. A big fat long snake slithered out and the guy picked it up and put it around his neck. He asked everyone if they wanted to hold the snake and David stepped right up! He wrapped it around David’s neck and we took pictures of him. Then Dad and then Molly put the snake around their neck.
When we got to the bottom we were walking by some stands and there were so many monkeys. We got in the car and started driving to the hotel. The car was so hot I thought I might die of heat. We were going to be in the hot car for 3 hours. When we got to the hotel it felt so good to jump in the pool.
One of the monkeys on our hike – he tried to steal a granola bar from Vivian! That is a buddha in the distance.
1 comment
Rebecca
March 14, 2014 at 8:43 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Cute monkey (Yeah, I know, I’m waaaaaaaay behind! Things have been crazy here lately, especially now that I’ve started doing drug surveillance (believe it or not) ). I visited the Batu Caves in Malaysia once, and there were all these little monkeys there, and one of them actually took my traveling companion’s tapestry and started eating it.
Luckily, the monkey lost interest, and we got it back. Since the tapestry was a gift for someone and was all chewed up, we had to buy another one. But we kept the chewed-up one as a souvenir.